Folklore is characterized by being:
- The set of traditional knowledge of a people.
- The identity of a nation that differentiates it from the others.
- An anthropological reconstruction of culture , that is, of social expressions, customs, beliefs and physical or material aspects, such as art.
- The unwritten science about various human cultures, passed down from generation to generation.
Full Answer
What are some folklore genres?
The 5 Genres of Folklore. Fairy Tales, Myths, Legends, Fables, and Folktales. Helper. Funny Teachers Make Laughter For Friends. Characteristics of Folklore. All folklore began as oral tradition. Oral tradition stories are unwritten stories that were told out loud and passed down from one generation to the next.
What are the different folktales?
Types of Folktales: Animal Tales. Tales of Magic/ Wonder Tales. Religious Tales. Realistic/ Romantic Tales. Tales of the Stupid Ogre. Jokes and Anecdotes, Formula Tales, Unclassified Tales. Previous - The Folktale.
What is the characteristic of folklore?
The most obvious characteristic of folk literature is its orality. In spite of certain borderline cases, it normally stands in direct contrast to written literature. The latter exists in manuscripts and books and may be preserved exactly as the author or authors left it, even though this may have happened centuries or even millennia ago.
What are the traits of folktales?
Traits of Folktales. Strong characters. Simple setting. May have magic or fantasy. A problem that gets solved (Charecters must prove themsevles, good vs. evil) Cultural clues (think about stories like Cinderella and The Rough Face Girl) A message, lesson, or explanation. Rule of 3 (or 7) Repeated phrases.
What is included in folklore?
Folklore is the body of culture shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes.
What are the 5 types of folklore?
The term folklore encompasses the traditional beliefs, stories, customs, and legends, transmitted orally, from generation to generation. This page will introduce you to the most common folklore genres: fairy tales, legends, myths, tall tales, and fables.
What are 3 different types of folklore?
Folklore is divided into three categories: verbal, partly verbal or customary, and non-verbal or material culture.
What are the 4 elements of folklore?
Ancient cultures were fascinated by the four basic elements of nature: water, wind, earth and fire. Mythologies, legends and folklore surround the elements, underlining their beauty and importance. They are so precious that deities in different cultures across the world were assigned to keep, care for or control them.
What are the 11 types of folktales?
Kinder und Hausmärchen, also known as the Grimms Fairy Tales, is a collection of stories which include a life lesson in each story.Animal Tales.Tales of Magic/ Wonder Tales.Religious Tales.Realistic/ Romantic Tales.Tales of the Stupid Ogre.Jokes and Anecdotes, Formula Tales, Unclassified Tales.
What are 3 examples of folktale?
Folk TalesBrer Rabbit.Chicken Little.Ghost Stories.Gingerbread Man.Goldilocks and the Three Bears.Henny Penny.The Little Red Hen.Stone Soup.More items...
Why is it called folklore?
Folklore is a combination of the words folk and lore which dates from 1846. The former refers to a community of people, and the latter comes from the Old English lar, meaning learning or knowledge. Folk, in this sense, is also used in terms like folk music, folk dance, and folktale.
What are the common topics of folklore?
Folklore as an Academic Discipline Folklorists focus on the study of human creativity within specific cultural and social contexts, including how such expressions (i.e. stories, music, material culture and festivals) are linked to political, religious, ethnic, regional, and other forms of group identity.
What is a purpose of folklore?
Folklore serves to teach about and preserve the culture of the people, or folk, of which it speaks. As a collection of narratives about the culture and people from which the narratives originate, folklore has an essential role in passing on a culture groups' traditions.
What are 5 characteristics of a folktale?
MatchAll folktales originally began as stories told by word of mouth.All folktales have a moral or teach a lesson.Many old folktales explain how something came to be. ... Characters in folktales are usually animals or people.Usually a character in a folktale must face an impossible test.More items...
What makes a story a folktale?
Folktales are stories in the oral tradition, or tales that people tell each other out loud, rather than stories in written form. They're closely related to many storytelling traditions, including fables, myths, and fairy tales.
What is the difference between folklore and folktales?
Unlike folklore that encompasses a large variety of cultural heritage, folktales refer to stories that have been passed down from ancestors of a particular group of people to the younger generations. These stories can be quite different from one another and do not belong to the same genre.
What are the 5 characteristics of folktales?
MatchAll folktales originally began as stories told by word of mouth.All folktales have a moral or teach a lesson.Many old folktales explain how something came to be. ... Characters in folktales are usually animals or people.Usually a character in a folktale must face an impossible test.More items...
What are the five elements of folktales?
Include good and evil characters.Usually has a hero or heroine.Has Magic.Often begins with “Once upon a time”Conflicts are resolved through kindness, courage or intelligence.
What are the common topics of folklore?
A folklorist studies the concept of folklore (folkloristics) including how culture groups create lore and how the lore iterates the group's customs and beliefs. Folkloristics focus on: Oral traditions (e.g. songs, poems, oral histories) Practices/ Performances (e.g. dance, holiday celebrations, religious traditions)
Why is it called folklore?
Folklore is a combination of the words folk and lore which dates from 1846. The former refers to a community of people, and the latter comes from the Old English lar, meaning learning or knowledge. Folk, in this sense, is also used in terms like folk music, folk dance, and folktale.
What is folklore in art?
Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain in a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts.
Why is folklore important?
Folklore lets people escape from repressions imposed upon them by society. Folklore validates culture, justifying its rituals and institutions to those who perform and observe them. Folklore is a pedagogic device which reinforces morals and values and builds wit.
How is folklore learned?
For the most part it will be learned by observation, imitation, repetition or correction by other group members. This informal knowledge is used to confirm and re-inforce the identity of the group. It can be used both internally within the group to express their common identity, for example in an initiation ceremony for new members. Or it can be used externally to differentiate the group from outsiders, like a folkdance demonstration at a community festival. Significant to folklorists here is that there are two opposing but equally valid ways to use this in the study of a group: you can start with an identified group in order to explore its folklore, or you can identify folklore items and use them to identify the social group.
When did folkloristics become popular?
The term folkloristics, along with the alternative name folklore studies, became widely used in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. When the American Folklife Preservation Act (Public Law 94-201) was passed by the U.S. Congress in January 1976, to coincide with the Bicentennial Celebration, folkloristics in the United States came of age.
How does the internet affect folklore?
It is too soon to identify how the advent of electronic communications will modify and change the performance and transmission of folklore artifacts. Just by looking at the development of one type of verbal lore, electronic joking, it is clear that the internet is modifying folkloric process, not killing it. Jokes and joking are as plentiful as ever both in traditional face-to-face interactions and through electronic transmission. New communication modes are also transforming traditional stories into many different configurations. The fairy tale Snow White is now offered in multiple media forms for both children and adults, including a television show and video game.
What is a folk group?
A more modern definition of folk is a social group that includes two or more persons with common traits, who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family. " This expanded social definition of folk supports a broader view ...
How is folklore passed along?
Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another either through verbal instruction or demonstration. The academic study of folklore is called folklore studies or folkloristics, and it can be explored at undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. levels.
What is folklore in society?
Folklorists are active in all areas of our society, studying topics such as education, healthcare, poverty, and immigration. Common understandings of folklore associate the term with either past-ness or out-dated beliefs, but folklore is and does so much more! Though folklore connects people to their past, it is a central part ...
What is folklore DNA?
What is Folklore? Folklore is our cultural DNA. It includes the traditional art, stories, knowledge, and practices of a people. While folklore can be bound up in memory and histories, folklore is also tied to vibrant living traditions and creative expression today.
What is local knowledge?
Local knowledge often responds to, augments, and fills the gaps in between its own understanding and knowledge created by larger, more dominant, or mainstream groups. Folklore asserts group identity, challenges cultural norms, and provides examples for ways of living a good life.
What is the "About Folklore" section?
Includes an “About Folklore” section that provides citations and quotes of folklore definitions from a variety of authoritative sources, including the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the Journal of American Folklore.
What is folklore in the essay?
Dundes disputes the notion that “folk” should be automatically identified with peasant or rural groups, or with people from the past.
What is the academic discipline of folklore?
Folklore as an Academic Discipline. Folklorists focus on the study of human creativity within specific cultural and social contexts, including how such expressions (i.e. stories, music, material culture and festivals) are linked to political, religious, ethnic, regional, and other forms of group identity.
What does "folk" mean in Dundes?
Dundes asserts that “folk” can refer to “any group of people whatsoever who share at least one common factor. It does not matter what the linking factor is-it could be a common occupation, language, or religion-but what is important is that a group…have some traditions that it calls its own” (Dundes, 1965: 2).
What is folklore?
Folklore is the set of customs and traditions that belong to and identify a culture . It is a flexible and broad concept that refers to the expression of cultural traditions that are transmitted from generation to generation, such as literature , art , history , myths , festivities, among others.
The science of folklore
Folklore studies the different expressions of the culture of a population.
Types of folklore
Material folklore. It refers to the physical objects that identify a culture, such as crafts, works of art or architecture .
What is folklore about?from en.wikipedia.org
Folklore consists of songs exploring points of view that diverge from Swift's life, including third-person narratives written from perspectives of characters that interweave across the tracks. The songwriting is primarily distinguished by its wistfulness, nostalgia, escapism, contemplation, and empathy. Although Swift opted for a new sound, the album retains stylistic aspects of her trademark songwriting, such as mournful delivery and bildungsroman passion. Compared to much of her older discography, Folklore reflected Swift's deepening self-awareness, introspection, and vivid storytelling that showed a higher degree of fictionalization and fewer self-references, culminating in an outward-looking approach. The lyricism is both personal and fictional, and a blend of both at times. The emotional and narrative range of Folklore is widened by expanding the focus from Swift's personal stories to imagined characters and personifications.
What are the three types of folklore?from en.wikipedia.org
Individual folklore artifacts are commonly classified as one of three types: material, verbal or customary lore . For the most part self-explanatory, these categories include physical objects ( material folklore ), common sayings, expressions, stories and songs ( verbal folklore ), and beliefs and ways of doing things ( customary folklore ). There is also a fourth major subgenre defined for children's folklore and games ( childlore ), as the collection and interpretation of this fertile topic is peculiar to school yards and neighborhood streets. Each of these genres and their subtypes is intended to organize and categorize the folklore artifacts; they provide common vocabulary and consistent labeling for folklorists to communicate with each other.
What is folklore in the 19th century?from en.wikipedia.org
Folklore as a field of study further developed among 19th century European scholars who were contrasting tradition with the newly developing modernity. Its focus was the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations, which were considered as residue and survivals of the past that continued to exist within the lower strata of society. The " Kinder- und Hausmärchen " of the Brothers Grimm (first published 1812) is the best known but by no means only collection of verbal folklore of the European peasantry of that time. This interest in stories, sayings and songs continued throughout the 19th century and aligned the fledgling discipline of folkloristics with literature and mythology. By the turn into the 20th century the number and sophistication of folklore studies and folklorists had grown both in Europe and North America. Whereas European folklorists remained focused on the oral folklore of the homogenous peasant populations in their regions, the American folklorists, led by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict, chose to consider Native American cultures in their research, and included the totality of their customs and beliefs as folklore. This distinction aligned American folkloristics with cultural anthropology and ethnology, using the same techniques of data collection in their field research. This divided alliance of folkloristics between the humanities in Europe and the social sciences in America offers a wealth of theoretical vantage points and research tools to the field of folkloristics as a whole, even as it continues to be a point of discussion within the field itself.
What are the two terms used in folklore?from en.wikipedia.org
This understanding in folkloristics only occurred in the second half of the 20th century, when the two terms " folklore performance " and "text and context" dominated discussions among folklorists. These terms are not contradictory or even mutually exclusive. As borrowings from other fields of study, one or the other linguistic formulation is more appropriate to any given discussion. Performance is frequently tied to verbal and customary lore, whereas context is used in discussions of material lore. Both formulations offer different perspectives on the same folkloric understanding, specifically that folklore artifacts need to remain embedded in their cultural environment if we are to gain insight into their meaning for the community.
What is verbal folklore?from en.wikipedia.org
Verbal folklore was the original folklore, the artifacts defined by William Thoms as older, oral cultural traditions of the rural populace. In his 1846 published call for help in documenting antiquities, Thoms was echoing scholars from across the European continent to collect artifacts of verbal lore. By the beginning of the 20th century these collections had grown to include artifacts from around the world and across several centuries. A system to organize and categorize them became necessary. Antti Aarne published a first classification system for folktales in 1910. This was later expanded into the Aarne–Thompson classification system by Stith Thompson and remains the standard classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. As the number of classified oral artifacts grew, similarities were noted in items that had been collected from very different geographic regions, ethnic groups and epochs, giving rise to the Historic–Geographic Method, a methodology that dominated folkloristics in the first half of the 20th century.
What is material culture?from en.wikipedia.org
The genre of material culture includes all artifacts that can be touched, held, lived in, or eaten. They are tangible objects with a physical presence, either intended for permanent use or to be used at the next meal. Most of these folklore artifacts are single objects that have been created by hand for a specific purpose; however, folk artifacts can also be mass-produced, such as dreidels or Christmas decorations. These items continue to be considered folklore because of their long (pre-industrial) history and their customary use. All of these material objects "existed prior to and continue alongside mechanized industry. … [They are] transmitted across the generations and subject to the same forces of conservative tradition and individual variation" that are found in all folk artifacts. Folklorists are interested in the physical form, the method of manufacture or construction, the pattern of use, as well as the procurement of the raw materials. The meaning to those who both make and use these objects is important. Of primary significance in these studies is the complex balance of continuity over change in both their design and their decoration.
How is folklore learned?from en.wikipedia.org
For the most part it will be learned by observation, imitation, repetition or correction by other group members. This informal knowledge is used to confirm and re-inforce the identity of the group. It can be used both internally within the group to express their common identity, for example in an initiation ceremony for new members. Or it can be used externally to differentiate the group from outsiders, like a folkdance demonstration at a community festival. Significant to folklorists here is that there are two opposing but equally valid ways to use this in the study of a group: you can start with an identified group in order to explore its folklore, or you can identify folklore items and use them to identify the social group.
What genre is folklore?
Folklore also encompasses elements of indie rock, electronica, dream pop and country.
What is folklore music?
Critics mostly categorize Folklore as an alternative, indie folk, and electro-folk album that departs from the pop maximalism and synth -driven sound of Swift's previous works. NME writer Hannah Mylrea characterized it as indie folk and alternative rock, while the same magazine's Gary Ryan dubbed it indietronica and chamber pop.
What are the best folklore albums of 2020?
The tracks "The 1", "Cardigan", "The Last Great American Dynasty", "Exile", "Mirrorball", "Seven", "August", "This Is Me Trying", "Invisible String" and "Betty" were also named among the best songs of 2020.
What is the average score of Folklore?
At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized score out of 100 to ratings from publications, the album received an average score of 88 based on 27 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Folklore is widely regarded as a pioneering album of 2020, and is the best-reviewed album of Swift's career.
How long did Folklore stay at the top of the charts?
Folklore stayed at the top for four weeks , becoming Swift's longest-running Irish number-one album. The tracks "Exile", "Cardigan" and "The 1" kicked-off at the third, fourth and seventh spots on the Irish Singles Chart, respectively, bringing Swift's career total top-ten hits to 15.
When did Taylor Swift's folklore come out?
Folklore (stylized in all lowercase) is the eighth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift. It was a surprise album, released on July 24, 2020, through Republic Records.
When will Swift's folklore be released?
Swift "poured all of [her] whims, dreams, fears, and musings" into the songs, and reached out to her "musical heroes" to collaborate with. She initially planned to release Folklore in early 2021, but it "ended up being done" sooner, and released in July 2020 without giving it second thoughts.
Summary
Origin and development of folklore studies
Folklore began to distinguish itself as an autonomous discipline during the period of romantic nationalism, in Europe. A particular figure in this development was Johann Gottfried von Herder, whose writings in the 1770s presented oral traditions as organic processes grounded in locale. After the German states were invaded by Napoleonic France, Herder's approach was adopted by many of his fellow Germans, who systematized the recorded folk traditions, and used them in th…
Overview
The word folklore, a compound of folk and lore, was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms, who contrived the term as a replacement for the contemporary terminology of "popular antiquities" or "popular literature". The second half of the word, lore, comes from Old English lār 'instruction'. It is the knowledge and traditions of a particular group, frequently passed along by wor…
Definition of "folk"
The folk of the 19th century, the social group identified in the original term "folklore", was characterized by being rural, illiterate and poor. They were the peasants living in the countryside, in contrast to the urban populace of the cities. Only toward the end of the century did the urban proletariat (on the coattails of Marxist theory) become included with the rural poor as folk. The common featu…
Folklore genres
Individual folklore artifacts are commonly classified as one of three types: material, verbal or customary lore. For the most part self-explanatory, these categories include physical objects (material folklore), common sayings, expressions, stories and songs (verbal folklore), and beliefs and ways of doing things (customary folklore). There is also a fourth major subgenre defined for c…
Folklore performance in context
Lacking context, folklore artifacts would be uninspiring objects without any life of their own. It is only through performance that the artifacts come alive as an active and meaningful component of a social group; the intergroup communication arises in the performance and this is where transmission of these cultural elements takes place. American folklorist Roger D. Abrahams ha…
See also
• Applied folklore
• Costumbrismo
• Family folklore
• Folklore studies
• Intangible cultural heritage
Further reading
• Folklore - Electronic Journal of Folklore
Defining Folklore
- One of the best known explanations of folklore is found in Alan Dundes’ brief essay, “What Is Folklore?” Dundes disputes the notion that “folk” should be automatically identified with peasant or rural groups, or with people from the past. He argues that contemporary urban people also have folklore and suggests that rather than dying out, folklore is constantly being created and recreate…
Genres of Folklore
- Material culture:folk art, vernacular architecture, textiles, modified mass-produced objects
- Music:traditional, folk, and world music
- Narrative:legends, urban legends, fairy tales, folk tales, personal experience narratives
- Verbal art:jokes, proverbs, word games
Folklore as An Academic Discipline
- Folklorists focus on the study of human creativity within specific cultural and social contexts, including how such expressions (i.e. stories, music, material culture and festivals) are linked to political, religious, ethnic, regional, and other forms of group identity.
Suggested Books and Articles About Folklore and Folk Groups
- 398.03 F719 SSHEL Stacks Bauman, Richard (ed.). 1992. Folklore, Cultural Performances, and Popular Entertainments: A Communications-centered Handbook. New York: Oxford University Press. 398 D73FO Main Stacks Dorson, Richard (ed.). 1972. Folklore and Folklife, An Introduction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 398 D91s Main Stacks and Oak Street Dund…
Websites Defining Folklore
- Folklore Wiki (American Folklore Society) This site contains collective contributions from members of the American Folklore Society and others in the folklore community. Includes an “About Folklore” section that provides citations and quotes of folklore definitions from a variety of authoritative sources, including the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Scie…